So... I've changed my position.
It's time to open up. Everything. No restrictions. Restaurants, bars, nightclubs, travel, concerts/sporting events/churches/gatherings. Let 'er rip.
Now, some of you might find that surprising coming from me. After all, I've consistently argued that this appears to be a very transmissible disease, such that there's a good chance US infection rates if we let 'er rip will reach at least if not above the 2009 H1N1 rates (60M estimated infected in the US). And I've also argued that the true mortality rate is many multiples of the seasonal flu.
So doesn't this mean that I'm arguing that we should open up fully, and thus consigning hundreds of thousands of people to die?
Well, yeah. But the truth is that people are
tired of this lockdown. It's so last month. I mean, people can try to put away their selfishness to help their fellow man for a little while, but 6 weeks?
C'mon, we're Americans. We want to go to the beach. We want to go to the restaurant. And masks are terribly unfashionable. Most living American have never known anything truly bad in their lives. Sure, 9/11 was bad, and it created a bunch of fear, but it was a 1-day event and created a rallying point--but the ensuing war didn't really result in any personal sacrifice. The last time they've every truly had to sacrifice might have been the Vietnam War, when we still had a military draft. But... That was a war fought by those not well off enough to be in college, or secure deferments, and the war was fought "over there". Before that, maybe WWII, when we actually had full society mobilization, rationing, etc. But those alive during WWII and those few who were alive during the Great Depression or the Spanish Flu are now too few to make a difference.
We simply cannot fathom that this is bad enough to change our behavior. And I mean that literally. We're so comfortable in our lives, in the power of our medicine, that we simply cannot wrap our brains around what a couple hundred thousand [or more] deaths over the span of a few months means to our way of life. Thus, we refuse to change our way of life to avoid it.
So I give up... Maybe America needs a good ol' kick in the face. We haven't proven we deserve better.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/oc-restaurant-hits-capacity-after-opening-doors-ignoring-stay-at-home-orders/2356303/?amphttps://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/california-orange-county-injunction-beaches/index.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitolhttps://www.apple.com/covid19/mobilityhttps://www.safegraph.com/dashboard/covid19-shelter-in-place?s=US&d=04-30-2020&t=counties&m=percenthttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/01/masks-politics-coronavirus-227765